Dr. Ellis on Genome Forward Breast Cancer Treatment

Matthew J. Ellis, MD, PhD, director, Section of Breast Oncology, Division of Oncology, Department of Medicine, Washington University, St Louis, MO, explains that sometimes years after a patient is actually diagnosed with cancer they are screened and tested using a variety of genomic testing methods.

While this method is good Ellis believes it will soon change in favor of a method he calls genome forward medicine. This method of treatment creates a patients genomic map at diagnosis and uses that map to create a tailored treatment plan.

The only item holding this method back currently is the complexity of the breast cancer genome. The average breast cancer genome has 1-2 thousand mutations and out of these multiple mutations only a few will be the driver mutations. This means you will need to find the key driver mutations before you can accurately predict response rates and map out treatment using the genome forward method.